Human brain activity related to speed discrimination tasks

The regional cerebral blood-flow (rCBF) pattern of the human brain was measured using positron emission tomography (PET) while subjects viewed, detected, judged the speed of a moving random dot pattern (RDP) or compared speeds of successive RDPs. In all four conditions, retinal input was identical. Two additional conditions, continuous presentation of a moving and a stationary RDP, were included to identify human MT/V5 (hMT/V5). Both speed discrimination tasks involved the right cuneus and right lingual gyrus and to a lesser degree the left lingual gyrus and a more anterior lingual region in the right hemisphere. There was, however, little or no differential activity over hMT/V5 during either speed discrimination. Direct comparison of the two speed discrimination tasks revealed higher activity in the right middle fusiform gyrus, a result reminiscent of that obtained in earlier studies using orientation and direction as the attribute to be discriminated. These results confirm that processing in the human visual cortex is task dependent and underscore the role of the middle fusiform gyrus in temporal comparison of simple attributes.